Model comparison

Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite vs Mercury 2

Mercury 2 is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.8 to 36.4 on the Noometry Index. Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite costs 2.1× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Mercury 2's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified October 10, 2026. 14 shared benchmarks.

Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite

Google

36.4

Rank #208 Confirmed

Mercury 2 Inception

38.8

Rank #167 Confirmed

Summary

They share 14 benchmarks with published results for both. Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite scores higher in 3 categories and Mercury 2 in 4 categories; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
The widest gap is in long context, where Mercury 2 leads 40.4 to 33.3.
The biggest single-benchmark swing is Vectara Hallucination Rate: 3.3% for Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite and 12.3% for Mercury 2.
Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite is cheaper at $0.10 / $0.40 per million input/output tokens, against $0.25 / $0.75 for Mercury 2.
Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite accepts more context: 1.05M tokens versus 128K.

Side by side

Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite and Mercury 2 specifications
	Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite	Mercury 2
Provider	Google	Inception
Noometry Index	36.4	38.8
Released	2025-06-17	2026-02-20
Weights	Proprietary	Proprietary
Context window	1.05M	128K
Max output	66K	50K
Input $ / M tokens	$0.10	$0.25
Output $ / M tokens	$0.40	$0.75
Results tracked	33	17

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Category by category

Coding Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite leads

Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite: 38.0 (#167), Mercury 2: 33.2 (#250)

Coding benchmarks
Benchmark	Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite	Mercury 2
WeirdML	35.2%	43.2%
LMArena Coding	1373	1391
ALE-Bench	325.9	785.58
LMArena WebDev	—	1170
SciCode	—	38.7%

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite: 27.8 (#89), Mercury 2: —

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
Benchmark	Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite	Mercury 2
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard	36.9%	—

Reasoning Mercury 2 leads

Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite: 21.5 (#196), Mercury 2: 23.0 (#170)

Reasoning benchmarks
Benchmark	Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite	Mercury 2
LMArena Hard Prompts	1377	1362
Kagi LLM Benchmark	40.5%	—
CritPt	—	0.8%
DTBench	62.8%	—
LMCA	18.1%	—
Epoch Capabilities Index	133.93	—

Math Not comparable

Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite: 35.5 (#144), Mercury 2: —

Math benchmarks
Benchmark	Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite	Mercury 2
Omni-MATH	48%	—
LMArena Math	1373	—

Knowledge Mercury 2 leads

Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite: 32.1 (#206), Mercury 2: 35.6 (#170)

Knowledge benchmarks
Benchmark	Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite	Mercury 2
Vectara Hallucination Rate	3.3%	12.3%
LMArena Expert	1373	1358
MMLU-Pro	53.7%	—
GPQA (HELM)	30.9%	—

Multimodal Not comparable

Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite: 28.6 (#109), Mercury 2: —

Multimodal benchmarks
Benchmark	Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite	Mercury 2
LMArena Vision	1198	—
VPCT	30%	—

Multilingual Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite leads

Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite: 49.5 (#129), Mercury 2: 46.8 (#153)

Multilingual benchmarks
Benchmark	Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite	Mercury 2
LMArena Non-English	1369	1331
LMArena Chinese	1404	1416
LMArena Russian	1373	1303
LMArena French	1388	—
LMArena German	1390	—
LMArena Japanese	1359	—
LMArena Korean	1358	—
LMArena Spanish	1396	—

Instruction Following Too close to call

Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite: 70.2 (#163), Mercury 2: 70.4 (#161)

Instruction Following benchmarks
Benchmark	Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite	Mercury 2
LMArena Instruction Following	1366	1328
IFEval	81%	—

Long Context Mercury 2 leads

Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite: 33.3 (#257), Mercury 2: 40.4 (#149)

Long Context benchmarks
Benchmark	Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite	Mercury 2
LMArena Longer Query	1373	1329
Fiction.LiveBench	47.2%	—

Writing & Preference Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite leads

Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite: 57.0 (#130), Mercury 2: 54.0 (#151)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
Benchmark	Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite	Mercury 2
LMArena Text	1379	1355
LMArena Creative Writing	1366	1289
LMArena Multi-Turn	1367	1358
WildBench	81.8%	—

Frequently asked questions

Is Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite better than Mercury 2?

Which is cheaper, Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite or Mercury 2?

Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite is cheaper. It lists at $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.40 per million output tokens; Mercury 2 lists at $0.25 and $0.75.

Is Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite or Mercury 2 better for coding?

Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite scores higher on coding benchmarks: 38.0 versus 33.2 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite does, with 1.05M tokens against 128K.

How many benchmarks do Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite and Mercury 2 share?

14 benchmarks have published results for both models. Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite has 33 scored results on Noometry and Mercury 2 has 17.